[erlang-questions] idea: service pack one

[Joe Armstrong]

Hi everybody,

I got fired up with enthusiasm at the Erlang conference - it seems to
me that there are a lot of *simple* things we
can do that we should have done years ago. The reason was that even
though many aspects of the system
suck and can be *easily* improved we have learnt to live with the
system (warts and all).

Now that the book is done my thoughts returned to the Erlang system.

Erlang is becoming popular and now needs to address the problems that
our new users encounter.

To do this I propose a project called "service pack one" (( its an
add-on that can be bolted on top of OTP))

(( I don't want to change anything in OTP - just add a free-standing
set of scripts that modify the behavior
of the system ))

Here's a few very simple things to do:

(each of the things starting +++ is a little project --- now I'd like
volunteers for each project - most of these are pretty easy
to hack together a quick and dirty prototype - but needs a little care
in getting all the details right)


1 +++  fix nicer error messages (Done - Kenneth showed this)

2 +++ experiment with inheritance (Richard mentioned this) (( I hacked
this together today, together with
       some code that checks for missing calls in imported libraries))
- I can post a longer explanation if you like

3 +++  make Erlang start fast so that people stop winging about it
starting slowly. And fix a
        *small*  distribution - here's a minimal version.

    ((aside - who cares if Erlang starts slowly - it was designed to
start once and never stop - we have systems
that have run for 5 years - a two seconds start-up time amortized over
5 years is not *too* bad))

   (( If you want to make it fast redo the boot scripts - it's all in
the documentation ! ))

  (I tried this yesterday) it's really easy


  1) make a boot file (jboot.erl)

{script, {"tiny","1.1"},
 [{preLoaded,[erlang,erl_prim_loader,prim_file,prim_inet,init,otp_ring0]},
  {primLoad, [tiny]},
  {kernel_load_completed},
  {apply, {tiny, start, []}}]}.

 2) write a minimal erlang program
     tiny.erl
     start() -> erlang:display'hello world'), erlang:halt().

3) compile the boot file
    systools:script2boot("jboot").

4) run
    erl -boot jboot

This runs in 0.29 secs on my macbook

   (( for comparison erl -s init stop takes 1.6 seconds)

5) you also need the erl script:

#!/bin/sh
ROOTDIR=`pwd`
BINDIR=$ROOTDIR
EMU=beam
PROGNAME=`echo $0 | sed 's/.*\///'`
export EMU
export ROOTDIR
export BINDIR
export PROGNAME
exec $BINDIR/erlexec ${1+"$@"}

6) copy erlexec and beam from the distribution to a local directory.
(these can be stripped to remove symbol table info)

7) the result is

$ wc erl erlexec beam jboot.boot tiny.beam

     10      20     172              erl
      58     277   22012          erlexec
    4247   35423 1097316  beam
       0       5     203               jboot.boot
       5      20     708             tiny.beam
    4320   35745 1120411 total

1.1 MB and 6 files - not *too* bad

8) for fun I packed stdlib/kernel/compiler in an archive using
    boot_tools:mk_lib() which packs everything a single 1.14 meg archive
   (boot_tools is in $DIST/otp_src_R11B-4/erts/boot/src

This means we can pack the compiler and base otp system into half a dozen files
 and under 2.5 Meg

(( this was my old sae sysytem that never really made it to the main release))

4 +++ compile the @spec definitions in comments into code that
*dynamically* checks types
        who cares if it's slow and can't be checked statically - the
dynamic check is very useful
        while developing

5 +++ bundle ejabberd (or yaws) in a standard configuration that ships
with Erlang.
          I talked to Mickael R. about this - if we shipped ejabberd
with every Erlang
          we could easily get tens of thousands of ejabberd servers up
and running in
         the twinkling of an eye.

6 ++++ fix BIFs for regexp, searching binaries etc - so people stop winging

7 ++++ fix c(Mod) and erlc so that they throw *everything* at them ie
dynamic type checking,
              xref, cover, dialyzer *without* you having to do anything fancy
             the defaults for compilation should be to throw all
checks possible into the compile
             cycle

8 ++++ make an *erlang* packing mechanism (put the entire application
in a .dets file - and NOT
.tar.gz or zip file - then define a bundle structure (look at the MAC
for inspiration) add application icons
and a desktop interface.

9 ++++ interface to flash using flex 2. Solve the GUI problem once and
for all as follows

      repeat after me: client = flash in the browser, server = erlang.
Intermediate protocol = flash AMF


There are probably more things I could add - feel free to add you pet
annoyance that can be easily
fixed and we'll put it into service pack one.



Cheers

/Joe Armstrong